One of the Holy Land’s most famous landmarks is the Mount of Olives. It rises between the Temple Mount, home of the most Holy Place, and the harsh Judean Desert. We know it to be the place from which Jesus, the resurrected Messiah, ascended into heaven and where it has been promised He will one day return. The Mount of Olives was a favorite place for Jesus to visit. He probably had fond childhood memories of camping on that hillside under the mount’s namesake trees, during visits to Jerusalem for festivals with His family. In addition, the Bible recounts for us the many times Jesus walked a well worn path over this mount as He traveled from His Father’s house on the Temple Mount to the Bethany home of His best friends, Lazarus, Mary and Martha.
The Oldest Jewish Cemetery
Spilling down the western slope of the Mount of Olives is the oldest and most important Jewish cemetery. The site has been a traditional Hebrew/Jewish burial location since antiquity, and the main present-day cemetery is approximately five centuries old. The burial grounds contain anywhere between 70,000 and 150,000 tombs, and is the final resting place of prominent Jewish figures like Eliezer Ben Yehuda, the father of the modern Hebrew language, revered politicians like Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, Nobel Prize Laureates, respected Rabbis and Jewish people of many generations .
One interesting tradition you will notice as you gaze on the cemetery is that the tombs are littered with rocks. At least in our eyes they look “littered.” Those rocks are actually signs of affection, comfort and honor. When you visit a tomb, you leave a rock as a visible sign of your presence. Stones on a loved ones tomb bring comfort to the grieving family, letting them know their loved one has been visited, grieved over and prayed for.
Jewish writings, the midrash, state that the resurrection of the dead will start on the Mount of Olives at the moment the Messiah arrives. The risen dead will then cross the Kidron Valley to Temple Mount. Although today’s Temple Mount is home to a Muslim Mosque, the golden Dome of the Rock, Solomon’s Temple occupied the Temple Mount until 586BC, and the Second Temple stood there until the Roman destruction of 70AD. According to Jewish tradition, a third Temple will occupy the Temple Mount when the Messiah makes His entrance. Those buried on the Mount of Olives are placed with their feet facing the Temple Mount so they can simply rise and walk straight ahead to the Temple with the Messiah leading the way.
Signs of the Times
Standing on the Mount of Olives, overlooking the graves that cascade down the hillside, our eyes are drawn to the awe inspiring Temple Mount and glistening limestone city of Jerusalem. But the call of this historic mount is not the past, it is the call of the future, specifically the prophetic passage in Matthew chapter 24 where Jesus gave His disciples a message describing the ‘signs’ of His return and the end times.
The signs that Jesus listed (war, famine, earthquakes) are not in themselves identifiers of the end times. They are indications of the ‘season’ we entered when Jesus ascended after His resurrection, they precede the unequivical signs of the end. In Matthew 24, Jesus points to two pivotal signs of the end. First, the whole world will have heard the Gospel – every nation, every community, every ethnic and language group, every person. Second, the abomination of desolation will desecrate the Holy Place.
Pivotal Signs
Regarding the first pivotal sign, in the great commission of Matthew 28, Jesus told His disciples to “go and make disciples of all peoples.” Then in verse 14 of Matthew 24 He says that when the Gospel has been preached “throughout the whole world, so that all peoples will hear it; then the end will come.”
According to the Joshua Project, which identifies ethnic groups or peoples with the fewest followers of Jesus, they have discovered 17,000+ unique people groups in the world with more than 7,400 unreached by the Gospel. And here is something that may surprise you: there are hundreds of unreached groups in America; for example 156,000 Satmar Jews in the area of Brooklyn New York, and approximately 7,200 Afgans in El Cajon, California. These are the peoples of whom Jesus said must hear the Gospel before “the end will come.” According to Dr. David Jeremiah, those words suggest how serious Jesus was and is about the world he came to save. In a sense, we are not waiting for Him to return; He is waiting for us to fulfill His Great Commission.
This Generation?
In Matthew 24 verse 34 Jesus speaks of a generation that will not pass away until all these things take place. As you can imagine, theologians and scholars have spent much energy and time interpreting verse 34. Some believe it speaks to the generation alive when the pivotal signs appear. They point to the promise of God that things will progress quickly once the seven years of Tribulation is set in motion. Essentially, per those holding to this interpretation, Jesus is saying that, once the events of the end times begin, they will happen within the lifetime of a generation. The age we are currently in, the age of grace or the church age, has lasted over 2000 years. It began the moment Jesus ascended to heaven from the Mount of Olives. But Jesus’ point was that when the time for judgment finally arrives, things will be promptly wrapped up….within a generation.
Others believe ‘generation’ should be translated as ‘race’ or nation, specifically the Jewish nation, with God promising that His chosen and distinctive group of people will not vanish from the earth before His plan is accomplished. That would be a valuable promise to hold on to! You have to agree that the Jewish nation, a nation without its own land or borders for over 2000 years, is a remarkable nation that has absorbed tragic and disastrous events, only to be born in one day as a modern nation in its ancient land! So if that is in fact the correct interpretation, God’s promise is being fulfilled every day Israel maintains its security and position in world events.
The one interpretation that has the least ability to be fulfilled is that Jesus was alluding to the generation of the disciples and Israelites alive at the time He spoke the prophecy on the Mount of Olives. The generation living in 70 AD when the Romans leveled God’s city, burned the Temple to a crisp and slaughtered of millions of Jews, did not live to see the glorious return of Jesus. Yes, they were alive when that tragic event happened, an event that is the subject of many Biblical prophecies, but as catastrophic as it was that calamity doesn’t come close to calamities the world has borne witness to since or those future ones described in the Tribulation.
Prophesy Interpretations
One reason why prophecy, even this Matthew passage, may seem imprecise, vague or open to various interpretations is that God wants every age to have reasons, to have the motivation to be ready for Jesus’ return. We should not ever, not in any age, think of Jesus’ return as some far off event on the timeline of history. One possible way to view His second coming is that the event has been running parallel in the ‘now’ of eternity with our earthly hour by hour, day by day, historical timeline. That means that for every generation on this side of eternity, Jesus’ return has been imminent, actually ‘now’, on heaven’s side of eternity.
As the earth decays both physically and spiritually from the sin that was introduced in the Garden of Eden, the ‘season’ signs of war, famine, and earthquakes, have always been a part of the human experience. However, they will become more frequent and disastrous, more common and intense without any one of them being the specific sign of the end. That we are in the ‘season’ is a fact, certainly we are closer to the end times today than we were yesterday.
Only The Father Knows
In the Matthew 24 passage Jesus quotes the book Daniel which speaks about a countdown set in motion by the abomination of desolation in the Holy Place. It is a period of 1290 days or three and a half years….the latter half of the seven years of tribulation….that is initiated by the desecration of the Holy of Holies.
How can that happen? The Holy Place has always pointed to the Temple and there isn’t an actual Temple in Jerusalem today. It is apparent and many believe this, that the 3rd Temple must be in place for the abomination of desolation to begin the countdown. But it is difficult to reconcile 1290 days with what Jesus said to the disciples about the time of this momentous event. Jesus plainly acknowledged that He didn’t know the time or date, He only knew that there is a plan with a time and date, that it is a fact. He said with certainty that no one but the Father knows. What we can be confident about is that it is imminent; it is not a time in the far off future.
Jesus’ Return Is Imminent – We Must ALWAYS Be Ready
The most dangerous lie that the world tells us is not “There is no God,” or “there is no hell”; NO!! The most dangerous lie that Satan has concocted for the world to spread is “there is no hurry.” When we are lulled into thinking that “Jesus is not coming today or for several years,” because of some interpretation of prophecy or worldly information, we have bought into the “no hurry” lie. Every generation must be ready for the imminent return of Jesus Christ and live as if He will arrive momentarily.
Tours to the Holy Land 